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June 2010
news
THE SOCIALIST
Reply to Mary Harney No to a two-tier health service - Fight the cuts By Councillor Matt Waine T WAS stomach churning to read Minister for Health, Mary Harney’s, opinion piece in The Irish Times on funding the health service. Her article was a pale defence of the status quo. But don’t be too hard on her. Mary Harney is the victim of a severe illness. She suffers from acute tunnel vision, where she only sees what see wants to and shuts out all the bad stuff. She has blocked out the cancer misdiagnosis scandal and the outrageous debacle of un-opened X-ray results. Her article is a case in point. She opens her remarks by stating that the government will spend €15.4 billion on health this year, a figure that is greater than the total annual take from income tax, therefore implying that we’re not paying enough for our public services. She fails to mention that something approaching twice that figure has already been poured into the banks this year. The reality is Ireland ranks below the EU average when it comes to actual health spending and the system is still recovering from the draconian cuts inflicted
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Mary Harney isn’t alone in government in supporting private healthcare
on the health service in the 1980s. This has been matched with €1 billion in cuts this year. The INMO claim that over 1,000 beds have been closed in the recent period and 1,900 nursing positions have been lost. Her argument is about how we spend money, how we get value for money, and how we use limited resources. We need to focus on preventative health care because “the hospitalization model of care is financially unsustainable,” she claims. While a greater emphasis on preventative care is to be wel-
comed, it is incredible and criminal to suggest that we need less hospitals. Between now and the end of the year, most services in Blanchardstown hospital in West Dublin will be closed for four weeks. In addition to that, some services are to be scrapped and Blanchardstown Hospital and Beaumont will “share” some service provision. Whichever way the Minister spins it, this will result in a worse service to the public and patients will undoubtedly suffer. Despite the nominal increase in
Campaign to stop Orthopaedic closure
health spending in recent years, the health service still suffered from cutbacks and overcrowding (such as the trolley crisis). Quite simply, there was not enough investment to cover need. In addition, the increasing role of the private sector, a policy encouraged by Harney and the government, has acted like a leech, sucking out vital resources from the public health service. Ireland has a two-tier health service. The public health service, starved of necessary investment and reeling from years of cuts to staff numbers, budgets and services has resulted in lengthy queues. In an attempt to clear some of these waiting lists, the government, through schemes like the National Treatment Purchase Fund, pour millions of taxpayers money into the private sector to pay for treatments and procedures available in the public sector! “It’s more important how money is spent than how it is raised,” she claims. However, what Minister Harney doesn’t get is, at present, your ability to pay determines the quality of healthcare you receive. If you cannot afford private health insurance, you join a long queue. Harney dismisses any alternative proposal, like a national health
Carbon Tax Just another stealth tax By Dave Vallely
By Dave Keating HE HSE'S plan to remove all orthopaedic services from St. Mary's Orthopaedic Hospital was the subject of a public meeting held on 27 April. The meeting, called by the Campaign for a Real Public Health Service, was attended by staff from the hospital, local residents and ex patients. I spoke to expatient Norma Goulding. DK. How long have you been a patient of the Orthopaedic? “On and off, for the last 46 years. I was born with bi-lateral congenital hip dislocation (CHD). Today, children are routinely checked for CHD and once diagnosed early, it is easi-
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ly remedied. I wasn’t diagnosed until I was two and so had to spend the next three years in the Orthopaedic. I have been in and out since having had two hip replacements up there a few years ago.” DK. More recently you had a knee replacement operation and had to go to a private hospital. Why was that? “The various specialists who looked after me always advised me to stay within the public health system. However, the surgeon who performed my hip operations left the HSE and I was too nervous to let someone else do my knee. I felt I had no option but to follow the surgeon.” DK. How did the two systems compare?
“I couldn't say enough good things about the Orthopaedic. The whole hospital is geared toward orthopaedic care in both facilities and staff. The staff in the private hospital didn't seem to have the experience of the Orthopaedic staff and the facilities were those of a general hospital. “No monkey poles, wrong chairs etc for orthopaedic patients. I dread to think what things will be like if the HSE get away with what they are doing. The Orthopaedic Hospital has built up huge expertise over the years and I do not want to see that lost. I am calling on other concerned patients, past and present, to protest outside St. Mary's Orthopaedic Hospital on Thursday, 27 May at 1.30pm.”
Government’s Savage Cuts for Dental Care for Medical Card Holders By Oisín Kelly HE DENTAL service continues to be slashed. Last month, the medical card service was viciously slashed by 29%. This is on top of the earlier drastic cut in service to PRSI workers. In the past 18 months, public dental care funding reduced by 35%. Previously, medical card holders got free routine treatments such as check-ups, fillings and extractions. More complicated work was also included in the scheme. With this €25 million cut, medical card holders will be reduced to pain relief and extractions with additional
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care only in “exceptional or highrisk cases”. The Irish Dental Association (IDA) estimates 468,000 fewer examinations of medical card holders this year. With growing unemployment and pay cuts, this year will see over 1.6 million medical cards issued – a rise of 144,000. The service needs to be expanded and not cut! The IDA estimates that there needs to be a €30 million rise for the medical card service. These savage cuts are in addition to cuts in the PRSI scheme. Last year, a PRSI payer could get two free check-ups and a free cleaning each year. There were also subsidies on other dental
work. Mary Harney cut this to just one check-up per year. Before the cuts, the dental service was inadequate – those reliant on it, mainly the poor and elderly, had worse dental health. More will be discouraged from visiting a dentist regularly. Public waiting lists for treatments will grow – storing up dental problems for years to come. Dental care will be increasingly pushed into the more expensive private sector – the poor and elderly being left with a run-down public service. The Socialist Party stands for a universal free public health care providing regular check-ups and all treatments to all.
service, free at the point of use, in favour of the status quo on the basis that it would be unworkable because it is impossible to provide unlimited care for all with limited resources. This is a question of priorities. The reality is that it is government policy to “limit” health spending. They favour a significant and increased role for the private sector, to boost their profits at the expense of working class people. If a fraction of the money which has been dumped into the banks, money which finds its way into the pockets of wealthy bondholders and global investment banks, was instead diverted into the health service, the cutbacks and waiting lists would quickly disappear. The job losses and bed closures could be reversed and a real, decent health service could be possible. Also, by bringing health workers – doctors, nurses and ancillary staff – into the management of the health service, the debacles over misdiagnosis and wastage etc. could be ended. These are the people who know what works and what doesn’t, not the bureaucrats in the higher echelons of the HSE or a Minister who values the interests of bankers over the right to a decent health service.
HE FIANNA Fáil and Green government continue their assault on the living standards of working class people with the rolling out this month of the carbon tax on home heating oil. This new tax will lead to increases of 6% for natural gas and 8.4% in household fuel bills. The price of home heating oil has increased by 35% in the last year. It marks a yet another shift of the tax burden onto lower income households. Minister Gormley’s assertion that the poorest will be shielded from the brunt of the tax is bogus. The reality is that the money the government is allocating for the insulation of social housing and alleviating its impact on those vulnerable to fuel poverty is wholly inadequate. The €130 million set aside for the retrofitting of homes is miniscule in comparison to the estimated €30 billion to €40 billion that is needed to upgrade the housing stock in Ireland to an acceptable standard of energy efficiency. The carbon tax is a stealth tax on incomes that will disproportionately affect those who earn less. The bottom 10% of income earners already spend about 16% of their disposable income on fuel, whereas the top 10% spend just 4%. Working people use most of their disposable income on necessities. A flat tax, such as the carbon tax, takes money out of ordinary people’s pockets that would have been spent on food,
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clothing and other essentials. Meanwhile, the wealthy remain comparatively untouched. The cost of heating is already a major concern for low paid workers and the unemployed. According to figures by the ESRI, 19.4% of households here experience fuel poverty, while 8% of households have gone without heating in the past year because they could not afford it. This will only be exacerbated as the recession gets worse. This new so-called “levy” will have little impact on curbing carbon emissions. People have no choice but to pay. Indeed, the role of this tax is not to protect the environment but to raise more revenue to be squandered on the bankers and speculators. Instead of requiring that developers build sustainable and energy efficient homes during the property boom, the government are now saying that the working class must pay.
...one more stealth tax